Cindy Shearer Invites Writers to Stay with Their Writing in Forthcoming Book
We’re excited to announce that CIIS faculty member Cindy Shearer, Chair of the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts and Writing, has a new book forthcoming in January 2026.
We are delighted to share that Cindy Shearer, DA, Program Chair of the Master of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Arts and Writing at CIIS, will publish Stay With Writing: Practices for Sustaining the Writer’s Work and Life (Bloomsbury Academic) in January 2026.
As a writer, text/image artist, curator, and educator, Cindy has long been at the heart of CIIS creative community. She is the founding director of the Master of Fine Arts programs at CIIS and currently serves as Professor and Department Chair for Interdisciplinary Arts. With Debashish Banerji, she also co-designed and co-leads the Creative Dissertation Pathway within the Ph.D. in East-West Psychology. Through her work, Cindy has shaped spaces where artists and writers can engage across disciplines, mediums and forms, while also developing their skills and capacities in ways that honor the complexity of artmaking as personal and collective practice.
This is for every writer who has experienced failure or discouragement, who has wondered how they can ever start again. Shearer reminds us, through her own experience, her wisdom and through a range of creatively salutary exercises that writers of every stripe can indeed come back to their art and stay with it.
Tanya Perkins, Associate Professor of English, Indiana University East, USA
About the Book
In Stay With Writing, Cindy brings her deep experience as a writer, teacher, mentor, and coach into conversation with the realities of the creative life. Writing, she reminds us, requires perseverance, meaning-making, and the courage to navigate loss and failure.
Blending craft, pedagogy, memoir, and personal essay, the book offers writers practices to sustain their writing and creative lives. Through reflective exercises and prompts, Cindy invites readers to:
- Develop personal, adaptable tools for their writing practice
- See rules as opportunities, not requirements
- Recognize failure as a guide toward what they truly want as writers
- Ask questions that clarify their goals and markets
- Build sustainable processes grounded in their authentic creative desires
Drawing on lessons from writers, choreographers, visual artists, and others, Cindy illuminates writing as a dynamic and always-evolving relationship that thrives when built on curiosity, commitment, and care.
A Glimpse Inside
All chapters include memoir/essay, reflection, prompts, exercises and resources. With its combination of insight, honesty, and inspiration, Stay With Writing is designed to be a companion for writers at every stage of their writing life.
Chapter One: Elliott: Loss and Found
Four-part memoir/essay on loss, failure, and how our relationships to writers and their writing can help us find our work — and ourselves as writers
Chapter Two: Why I Quit Writing and How I Found A New Art Form
Text/image narrative of why I stopped writing but started again when I claimed writing as an ally and created my own tools, crafting practices that truly support writers
Chapter Three: Stay With It
Memoir/reflection on the valuable lessons artists in all disciplines offer writers and why possibility (staying with it), practice, play (curiosity), place/peace, and perspective/vantage point can help us successfully shape our writing
About Cindy Shearer
Cindy Shearer, DA, is a writer, text/image artist, and curator who practices and teaches writing as art — “a process,” she writes, “that reconfigures the boundaries of writing and visual art.” She created Ten Not-So-Tangible Tools for Writers, a meditation on the writing process in text and image. Cindy also has extensive experience in program development, curriculum design, editing, and coaching. At CIIS, she continues to nurture an environment where interdisciplinary practice thrives and writers are encouraged to discover their own artistic pathways.
Publication
Stay With Writing: Practices for Sustaining the Writer’s Work and Life will be published in January 2026. We look forward to celebrating this work and the support it will offer to artists and writers in sustaining their creative lives. Discover more about the book.